Indic Script Support on the Windows Platform
Intended Audience: |
Managers, Software Engineers, Systems Analysts |
Session Level: |
Intermediate |
The advent of single worldwide source on Windows 2000 enabled
Microsoft to support Indic scripts on the Windows platform for the
first time. Starting with Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Sanskrit and
Tamil on Windows 2000, Windows XP added support for Kannada,
Telugu, Gujarati and Punjabi. The next major release of Windows
will add yet more Indic script support. This presentation will
focus on the technical and political challenges particular to
enabling Indic scripts on Windows, and the specific technologies
that make that Indic support possible. Participants should come away with a basic understanding of the
relationship between a linguistic character in Indic and codepoints
in Unicode, and how that relates to the underlying technologies on
the platform, including:
--the interaction of input, fonts and rendering engines
--legacy codepages versus Unicode
--the misunderstood need for an IME (versus a keyboard)
--collation
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